Chocolate for the soul
The other day I walked right into the corner of a hot oven door. The blow was delivered smack in the middle of my forehead. A red dent gave way to a purple swelling, which then settled on being a bile-yellow colour. Of the resulting mark, Grant pointed out that I now really do resemble Harry Potter (a name the Bangladeshi potwashers once started calling me by – thankfully that never really caught on).
Maybe it was the concussion speaking, but it got me thinking about how things happen so fast – all of a sudden I’m finding myself with a mortgage and my friend from high school, Bec, has just informed us that she’s pregnant (the first in my group of school friends, so congrats and good luck to B and T for leading the way!).
Sitting down to sponge the wound was probably the first time I had ever indulged myself in not doing work while at work. How did it come to this? So at the end of a long week, I woke up the next morning, opened the fridge and pulled out the container of prunes I had macerating in vanilla tea and brandy. Some two weeks ago, the original intention was to make truffles in time for SHF #25. Even though I’m too late to meet the deadline, I resolved to make them anyway as a personal celebration of being able to take a moment to wind down.
The recipe comes from Let It Simmer, the latest book from Sean Moran of Seans Panaroma, home to amazing food and THAT glorious nougat recipe. For the truffles, whole almonds are first roasted, coated in toffeed sugar, then chocolate, stuffed into each soft, boozy prune and the whole dipped in dark chocolate, and rolled in bitter cocoa powder. A bit like turducken if you will. The crunchy almond doubles as an “edible prune kernel”. Soothed by the combination of chocolate, alcohol and vanilla, the scratch on my forehead fades into the distance and a smile plays at the corners of my mouth. Despite what seems like a lengthy process, the effort involved is actually quite minimal, and whatever time you spend making these, is indeed time well spent.
jules said,
December 5, 2006 @ 11:43 am
I’m a big fan of Sean’s work too…was planning on making these truffles soon so glad they turned out fr you… loove the nougat too…and am having lunch there on sat…can’t wait
Y said,
December 6, 2006 @ 10:42 pm
I recently scored a big slab of the nougat. Have been eating it for the past couple of days. It seems to go with everything – tea, sparkling wine.. etc. :9